HSBC Targets Extra Revenue from Business Units

HSBC doubled its target on Thursday for additional revenue that the bank plans to achieve by referring more clients between its investment banking and commercial banking units.

HSBC said it would generate an additional $1 billion in revenue through efforts like selling more products across the different units and also bringing its commercial banking and private banking operations closer together, especially in emerging markets.

Updating investors on its progress after the first year of a three-year reorganization that includes job cuts and asset sales to increase profitability, HSBC said it was content with what it had achieved so far.

“We made encouraging progress,” Stuart T. Gulliver, the chief executive, said on a conference call with journalists. “I think we surprised in how fast we can execute.”

HSBC said it had sold or exited businesses through a total of 28 transactions since the beginning of last year and would continue to do so at a similar pace over the next two years. Mr. Gulliver said the bank was watching some products at its global banking unit, which might become unprofitable because of stricter regulation or changing consumer demands.

HSBC has sold about $6 billion worth of assets since the beginning of last year, including the sale of its credit card unit in the United States to Capital One Financial and its upstate New York branch network to the First Niagara Financial Group. It also agreed to sell its general insurance businesses in Asia and Latin America in March and its businesses in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras in January.

“We have to keep the intensity of the program up,” said Mr. Gulliver, who described the effort as the bank’s “biggest reshaping in at least 32 years.”

HSBC, which is based in London but generates most of its earnings from Asia, said it expected to have $3.5 billion in savings by the end of 2013, the top end of the range it gave last year.

Mr. Gulliver said the biggest threats to HSBC’s strategy were the situation in the euro zone and questions about “whether Greece stays in and whether firewalls are large enough to protect Spain.”

HSBC confirmed its target for return on equity, a measure of profitability, of 12 to 15 percent; it had an 11 percent rate last year.